Henman bemoans the new go-slower court

Best of British: Alex Bogdanovic (l) beat Arvind Parmar in the all-British tie

By John Parsons

12:01AM BST 11 Jun 2003

Tim Henman saved a match point as he scrambled through his first challenge at the Stella Artois tournament yesterday and then revealed that his greatest concern approaching Wimbledon is not his form - or even his shoulder - but the pace of modern grass courts.

"There's obviously been an effort to slow the game down in recent years and I'm asking whether it's gone a little bit too far on grass," he said after his 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) defeat of the seasoned Italian, Davide Sanguinetti.

"The court's pretty slow. With my style of game I'd prefer them to be quicker, with a bit lower bounces, but I don't make those decisions."

There has been exaggerated criticism that big servers were too dominant to make the game exciting, particularly after last year's Wimbledon final between baseliners Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian.

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"We realise there'd been a big effort to slow the game down," Henman said. "Some indoor courts needed slowing down but if you look at what happened at Wimbledon last year it does pose the question whether on grass it's been slowed down too much.

"It's making life a lot harder, that's for sure. A few years ago strategy on grass didn't come to it. Now everyone has an opportunity to set themselves up for passing shots and returns."

He said he had expressed his concerns to officials at The All England Club after The Championships last year but their response was that nothing had been done to change the pace of the courts.

This was confirmed last night by Wimbledon referee, Alan Mills who said: "Last year the courts were harder than normal but that was entirely due to the elements. Nothing intentionally was done to change the pace of them and nothing has been done either this year."

He said that former champion, Andre Agassi, had practised there on Monday and afterwards both he and his coach, Darren Cahill were "enthusing" about the courts.

"I was pretty happy to get out of the situation," he said. Certainly he was a trifle lucky that Sanguinetti was unable to get a clean strike with what Henman called his opponent's "world class backhand" on the match point at 6-5 in the final set.

Having made his escape, however, Henman played a superb 7-3 tie-break to advance to the third round tomorrow against either Holland's Sjeng Schalken or American, Todd Martin, whom he beat in Paris two weeks ago.

Far from being dangerously aggressive, Henman was over reticent in his approach in the first set, although things started to improve when he was looking for more chances to create space to go forward and finish off points.

Henman broke in the opening game of the third set but with the consistency of his serve still fluctuating, he was fortunate that Sanguinetti did not break back in the sixth game, rather than two games later. A mis-hit by the Oxfordshire player wrong-footed Sanguinetti, who, after being passed by Henman's next shot, threw his racket down in despair.

"I wasn't too complimentary with myself or anything else associated with the match," said Henman, runner-up for the past two years and three times in the past four. "Although the atmosphere and the crowd was great.

"I'd like to feel that in the past month my game has taken big strides but I know I can serve better than I did today and if I do that there's no reason why I can't make the final again - and go one step further."

In spite of losing in the play-off for Wimbledon, wild- card Alex Bogdanovic seems certain to receive one of the remaining direct places when he followed up his fine week in Surbiton by winning his first match on the ATP, beating fellow Briton, Arvind Parmar, 6-7 (3-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-2). He now meets Frenchman, Anthony Dupuis.

Bogdanovic, who has soared from 504 to 361 in the world rankings, wore down Parmar, who crucially missed three break points early in the second, in a match more suited to clay than grass. Volleys even in rallies, let alone after a serve, were in desperately short supply.

Agassi celebrated the 1,000th match of his career with a 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 defeat of Australian Peter Luczak and, like Henman, took his time to settle back on the grass.

His coach Cahill, formerly with Hewitt on the first two occasions he was champion here, had advised him to take a wild-card into the tournament because "I need more matches and because this has been such a good tournament for guys doing well at Wimbledon".